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Sunday, July 03, 2005

Iran said on Sunday it had lodged a formal diplomatic protest after a newspaper in Bahrain published a cartoon deemed insulting to the Islamic republic’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi also warned countries in the region not to offend Iran’s ruling Shia clergy, saying that “our capabilities are incomparable”. READ MORE

“As soon the caricature was printed in the paper we sent them a notice, we summoned the Bahraini ambassador in Tehran, met with the one of directors of the Bahraini foreign ministry and their information minister there,” Asefi said.

Late last month the al-Ayyam newspaper published a caricature showing Khamenei next to a graph representing the presidential election, which was won by hardliner Mahmood Ahmadinejad.

The supreme leader’s long beard is growing on the graph in an upward zigzag -- in other words alleging he played a decisive role in the victory of the new ultra-conservative president.

Asefi said authorities in Sunni-ruled Bahrain had “accepted that this was a major mistake” and had also “summoned the newspaper managers to reprimand them.”

“The countries of the region should know that it is them that will lose by doing these sort of things,” he warned.

“Our capabilities are incomparable with theirs. We always stress friendship and cooperation with other countries, and they have to be more careful.”

Iran threatens its neighbors that poke fun at Iran's Supreme Leader. Imagine how the regime treats its own citizens that criticize him or the regime.